July 14, 2009

New Lobby Shop Launches

Louis Hengen has left Colling Swift & Hynes to start the Hengen Group.

Hengen, a lobbyist and onetime legislative aide to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), says he wants to concentrate on energy, climate change and telecommunications issues. For now, he is the Hengen Group's only employee, but he'd like the firm to eventually be bipartisan. He has not yet taken office space.

Hengen says he plans to keep his overhead low, and wants to limit his client list to three or four for now.

"I needed to be on my own and I needed to...focus more attention on those clients and provide more value to them," he says.

At Colling, Hengen was listed as a lobbyist for clients including the U.S. Virgin Islands, Quest Diagnostics, Inc., and Media General Inc. The Hengen Group has registered one client, Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., a former Colling client, so far. Hengen says Smurfit-Stone left Colling because of a client conflict, and he has no plans to pursue other clients he represented while at the firm.